What is the best order for workflow?

Me too, as well as general brightness and WB.

One unpleasant consequence of these AI features that create a new DNG is now your edits are no longer in one place.

Yes. Adobe is working on eliminating the need for an extra file. I hope they succeed.

in ACR at least you can select both raw files and edit at once (with both selected and one being a main view ) - except of course Adobe's buggy implementation (they did not call it a technology preview or public beta - so shame is on them and we can call it as it is ) of their new AI-Denoise does not let you to be sure that your edits are in similar places ...

they will not as it requires the least capable GPU that they still support to render/open raw in the timeframe similar to open it w/o a selected AI function ( as AI features precede demosaick ) or they have to forfeit full view resorting to a small crop preview ( like DxO PL does ) ... granted they can simply introduce a new process version with the likes of RTX 4xxx GPU installed in the system as a minimum to select that new process version .... there is no replacement for displacement

users can preview effects in ACR/LR in crop view window - so users do not need to execute full AI NR ( or else ) till they are OK w/ all adjustments that one might think/hope are not subjects to bugs in the current implementation

that is clear from one of many bugs = dprevived.com/a/G1PU7KSJEpqBymFdPYycRR2VPSIgLsReQ6vpWHq9dAgJc18u1TpNZtrbZQESvQ72/5652/

you can't do some adjustments when Adobe's Ai NR does that

first decide which raw converter to use ( if you have that option of course ) - they are not all equal in various capabilities ...

I guess you'll get mostly Adobe responses.

darktable works a little differently. dt uses a concept they call the "pixel pipe". Each processing tool is a self contained module with an input and and output. As you apply a module to your edit, the changed image parameters are passed on to the next module as the input to that module. The pixel pipe is the chain of modules each passing the changes along to the input of the next module.

With this arrangement, it is important that the modules be in the correct order in the chain. The devs have set up the pixel pipe order so things work correctly, no matter what order you apply edits.

However, in the most recent versions they allow you to edit the app's UI. You can create your own custom menus of modules, hide stuff you don't like and so on. Nice!

You can also change the order that the tools appear in the UI. What's interesting (and dangerous) about this, is that changing the order the tools appear is not just a visual UI change, it also changes the order of the pixel pipe. The devs recommend you don't do this unless you really know what you are doing. I've seen dt tutorials where the presenter happily messes with the pixel pipe order. He sounds like he knows what he is doing. Not wise to change the order just for UI neatness, though, it'll change the editing.

Example

On the right panel you can see how I have customised the darkroom tab. The "exposure" module is down the bottom of the list, 3rd from the end. I could use the UI tools to move that to the top (if I wanted it there). However, that will change the pixel pipe order of operations. Not a good idea unless I need to change that order for some reason.

A shame actually, because it is tempting to misuse the feature to organise the modules more conveniently.

I believe the pixel pipe is organised from the bottom up - that suggests denoising is done first (after some of the automatic modules like input colour profile, demosaic and so on).

Actually, here is the complete pixel pipe from the bottom up for this image:

Different philosophy from Adobe's hiding the implementation approach from the user 😁

Sad but true ...

Excellent!

By coincidence, just today, I read this elsewhere:

pixls.us/articles/darktable-3-rgb-or-lab-which-modules-help/

rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Toolchain_Pipeline